Sr. Scientist, Non-Poultry

What You’ll Be Serving Up:

You will ensure suppliers meet KFC's industry-leading food safety and quality standards for the non-poultry category, enabling exceptional experiences to our guests on every visit. Your mission will be to support the launches of exciting new products and promotions of non-poultry products by ensuring compliance across KFC US, playing a key role in offering our customers a crave-worthy menu.

Here’s How You’ll Spice Things Up:

Supporting our ground-breaking product innovation

• Bring exciting new food concepts to life by serving as a key player in product development and launches: partner with Product Development, Commercialization, and Operations teams to collect and validate nutritional information, develop and maintain specifications/QAPs, and ensure seamless rollouts of promotions.

Achieving excellence across our supplier network

• Protect KFC US’ reputation with its customers by achieving and maintaining 100% adherence to Yum! Global / KFC Food Safety and Quality standards for all assigned suppliers, including Buffet and SET suppliers.
• Establish a quality-focused culture throughout our supplier network by facilitating summits, workshops, industry meetings, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Deliver superb quality throughout the buffet program by managing approved products and suppliers and collaborating with Operations to ensure compliance with program objectives.
• Help manage the supplier approval process for assigned product categories and collaborate with RSCS / suppliers on initiatives to improve restaurant margins.
• Maintain accurate supplier and product records by updating approved supplier and product lists and ensuring top-notch compliance with required menu items.
• Drive tight coordination with suppliers by traveling up to 25% of the time to field locations.

Ensuring adherence to our compliance standards

• Safeguard customer satisfaction through expedient resolution of product concerns, promptly investigating and addressing food safety or quality issues raised through QA hotline, operations, or customer feedback.
• Spearhead crucial nutrition testing programs by coordinating testing frequencies, validating data accuracy, and partnering with third-party vendors to maintain up-to-date consumer nutrition information on the website.
• Ensure alignment with regulatory requirements and internal nutrition goals by serving as a KFC nutrition compliance expert on Yum! cross-brand and industry committees.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Education:
  • Bachelor’s degree from an accredited 4-year university, preferably in a science-related field.
• Experience:
  • 8+ years of relevant experience with Bachelor’s, 6+ years with Master’s.
  • Experience in a Restaurant Support or a Supplier Quality Assurance position for a quick service restaurant company ($500M+ in size) preferred.
• Skills:
• Mindset:
• Excellent oral and written communication skills to engage and align cross-functional stakeholders; ability to present effectively to senior leaders.
• Strong analytical skills to interpret data and form action-able recommendations.
• Exceptional project management capabilities, including driving great outcomes in a fast-paced environment.
• Relentless in the pursuit of excellence and maintaining high standards.
• Resourceful and adaptive in ambiguous situations with a proven ability to operate “in the grey.”
• Resilient in the face of obstacles and persistent in driving towards results.
• Thrive in a collaborative environment.

KFC Corporation, based in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the few brands in America that can boast about having a rich, 60-year history of success and innovation. In fact, KFC is the world's most popular chicken restaurant chain and a division of Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company.
 
Yum! Brands, Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky, has over 45,000 restaurants in more than 135 countries and territories and is one of the Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders in North America. In 2018, Yum! Brands was recognized as part of the inaugural Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. The company’s restaurant brands – KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell – are global leaders of the chicken, pizza and Mexican-style food categories. 
 
More important than our size is our commitment to breakthrough innovation and the success of our employees. We're proud of the unique culture we've built, one where everyone can be their best self, make a difference and have fun! We believe in our people, trust in their positive intentions, encourage ideas from everyone, and have actively developed a workforce that is diverse in style and background.